


Born to Die

by spaceconspiracy



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bones is a hitman, Character Death, F/M, Flashbacks, Gun Violence, Jim is dangerous, M/M, Pasha is the prized son of a branch of the Russian mafia, Past Character Death, Revenge, Russian Mafia, Stabbing, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Yeah its p intense in the last chapter sorry, motivated by money
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:39:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1339048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceconspiracy/pseuds/spaceconspiracy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim passes him a file.<br/>	"This won't be quick. Maybe." <br/>	Bones opens it, and inside is a photograph of a family - grainy, grey; Jim does love to be theatrical, like something straight out of a film. Father, mother, child, no more than eighteen (older than Joanna), all with bright eyes and golden curls. The names next to their faces are in Cyrillic script; Russian. "That one," Jim whispers, pointing at the youngest of the trio.</p>
<p>Or, the one where Jim is set on revenge and Bones has to win the heart of Pavel Chekov before emptying a bullet into his skull.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> I FINALLY FINISHED THIS FIC. I've been working on it since like December but I really wanted to finish it before posting it. Many a thanks to Isabelle whose excitement kept me writing and Tory for p much everything else. Un-Beta'd because why not. Excuse any errors please and thanks. 
> 
> Here's to hitman!Bones and Lana Del Rey's Off to the Races for inspiring more McChekov AU's then I care to mention. 
> 
> PS; this kind of has a lot of dark elements so don't say I didn't warn you.

When Leonard McCoy steps into the _Enterprise_ the first thing he thinks is: _Scotty needs to tone down the music._

It's loud and pulsating, echoes across the sleek floors and bounces off the walls, the beat coming back at you like a punch to the ear drums. It's some techno or dubstep thing or whatever it is the kids are into these days, and it starts a migraine in the back of Leo's neck that's spreading all the way to his forehead. The stark contrast of the coloured bulbs flickering across the black walls and floors doesn't help matters either; he makes a mental note to tell Scotty as such because he runs the damn place, but crumples it up and throws it out in an imaginary waste bin when he recalls that this is the sort of thing that _Jim_ likes.

Speak of the devil; Scotty himself is coming up behind Leonard and throwing an arm a cross his shoulders. He already smells of the world's finest scotch (birthday present from Nyota), and is laughing about something the dancers flanking him said. "McCoy!" he says like Leo is his favourite person in the world. (He's not.) "Jim's been a-lookin' for ya."

"I know," Leonard growls over the music and tries to dodge out from under Scotty's arm, but he holds on tightly and presses his mouth closer to Leo's ear.

"Be careful, mate," Scotty tells him with an edge to his voice. "Jim's not looking so good."  
Leonard does the best he can to suppress the wince that follows with the words, the warning layered underneath the innocence of the phrasing, but nothing escapes Montgomery Scott's noticed and the lines around his eyes deepen.

When Jim's not good, nobody is.

So, Leonard says, "Turn this  music down, Scott, I can't hear a damn thing you're sayin'."

Scotty laughs so hard one of the girls behind him pats his shoulder and Leonard successfully gets away, suppressing the urge to rub at his ears; thankfully, he can hear it go down a decibel and smiles a little before ducking between two winding hallways in the back and getting through the door marked _Employees Only_ uninterrupted a second time. The camera above his head blinks green and he winks at it, nodding at the man behind the monitors in another part of the building (who he knows is nodding back).

Down the dimly lit hallway is Spock, watching him with the stoniness to his features that never really seems to go away unless he's looking at Jim. The lift of his eyebrow suggests he knows why Leonard's here, that Jim's called him, and really, Leo isn't surprised. Spock knows everything; Jim tells him everything.

"Doctor," Spock greets him, even though the title is long dead, gone in the wind with a malpractice suit that Jim only got to vanish _after_ Leo lost his license.

"Mr. Spock," Leonard replies in kind, offers up a smile he knows won't be returned, and slips behind Spock to open the door, shutting it tight behind him and ignoring the glare that Spock gives him.

"Bones!" Jim Kirk cries like Leo is his favourite person in the world. (He is.)

Bones - he's always Bones when inside this room, not Leo, or Leonard, or Len, or even McCoy and he knows it - grins back at Jim, his best friend, and has an arm extended like he's going to return a hug Jim isn't giving him.

Jim (who doesn't look so good, eyes blank even as he smiles) stands from the armchair that has Christopher Pike carved into the (back, left) leg of it and leads Bones by the elbow across the room. He doesn't sit him down - a quick job, then, maybe, it's always hard to tell with Jim - and passes him a file that's too thin to be anything but a quick job. (Maybe.)

"This won't be quick. Maybe."

Of course.

Bones opens it, and inside is a photograph of a family - grainy, grey; Jim does love to be theatrical, like something straight out of a film. Father, mother, child, no more than eighteen (older than Joanna), all with bright eyes and golden curls. The names next to their faces are in Cyrillic script; Russian. "That one," Jim whispers, pointing at the youngest of the trio, a crook to the corner of his mouth.

There's a lump in the back of Bones throat. He hadn't expected that. The father, of course, the mother, maybe. But not the child.

"Jim," he says on reflex, thinking of Jo for a second longer than he should. "How old is this kid?"

"Seventeen," Jim informs him and the smile grows. "Cutest darn thing. He's half as smart as I am, should probably be in, I don't know, some top secret military intelligence thing." He shrugs, like it means nothing, like he doesn't know the kid from Adam. "They have all sorts of protection around him, so you'll have to win this one."

Of course.

It's not like he hasn't done this before of course. His hands, elbows, all the way up his shoulders and down his back is soaked with the blood of people he knew, people he didn't. Some of them were easy (a quick job), others - he'd won them over, too. Won them over with nice dinners and a kiss or two if Jim allowed it. Those are the names he deletes.

Bones closes the file; he doesn't think he can look at the grainy photo for a minute longer. There's  a question burning in his mouth, a question Jim's not going to like, but it's not one that Bones usually asks. God, the kid's just so young, if it's a warning, he could shoot the wife, but the _kid_. "Why him?"

Jim's face sharpens, the smile gone like it was never there, and his eyes flicker to the armchair with Pike's name carved into it. "It's not important. Just do your job." He turns his back then, flopping into the chair behind his desk. He spins it around twice, a childish thing that only Jim Kirk does, and says, "I'll drop another twenty grand into Jo's account."

It's enough. It's enough for now.

"Okay."

~x~

Leonard stares at the file sitting on the passenger seat and flexes his hands around the steering wheel until his knuckles are white, the scars in them evident. He's parked in the driveway of an empty house (no furniture, not yet, but this job is a long one and Jim will send Rand and Scotty to fix it up soon. Maybe even Cupcake and Mitchell if he's in the mood.) He's dressed in God damn flannel and jeans and he feels like a fucking douchebag but Jim insisted. ("Use that Southern accent you got buried under there, too," Jim said. Oh Lord, help Leonard.)

He tears his gaze from the file and looks out the window instead, watching a kid with a mark over his head lift a box out of the back of a U-Haul and smile at his mother, who puts her hand on top of his head and says something Leonard cannot hear.

He's pretty - Pavel, his file says - all golden and bright eyed.  Too pretty for his own good, especially in a place like San Francisco, and young. So young, too young. Leonard's palm tingles.

When all the boxes are lifted off the U-Haul, the family goes inside, probably all nice and snuggled up, laughing, and packing, and thanking their lucky stars they got to America all the way from Russia nice and safe and sound. It'll be good here, they're probably thinking. Get away from all the hate brewing. (Then again, Leonard could be off base, and maybe they're actually bitter about having to move; maybe they wanted to protect their son; maybe their nationalists. Leo doesn't know. He will, though.) Leo climbs out of his car with a plate of cookies baked by Nyota herself and shakes off the tingle still sitting on the inside of wrists and crosses the lawn to their front door.

He's only two knocks in when it's opened by the mother. She's pretty, like her son, the curls that she must have passed on framing her face, her eyes bright and blue. She stares at Leonard with an "o" of surprise to her mouth, painted red, and flusters, but Leonard holds up his cookies and says with the best imitation of his childhood accent, "Welcome to the neighbourhood."  
  
She stares at him for a beat longer and then says something in Russian that Leo has no hope of understanding at all. He should have expected that much, and the step back he takes isn't entirely fake. "Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't realise -"

"Mama?" A voice calls, and it's Pavel, appearing into the hallway with confusion creased in his brow. He looks at Leonard then, green eyes meeting Leo's and the tingle that never really went away shoots up his arms; he barely manages to keep a hold of the cookies in his hands and swallows hard.

Oh, God.

"Oh, hello!" the kid smiles. "You must be the neighbour." His accent mangles his words, turns th into a z and stresses vowels in the wrong places. It's - well, it's cute."I am Pavel." Pavel reaches the doorway and extends a hand to shake Leonard's, the smile on his face broad and endearing and when Leonard takes his hand in his own, he thinks-

_I'm supposed to kill him._

He doesn't know if it's a realisation or a reminder.

Pavel's mother speaks up again, in rapid fire Russian that has Pavel chuckling and trying to suppress more than that, removing his hand from Leo's to press it into his mouth. "My mama apologizes," he tells Leonard. "She does not speak English."

"Well, that's quite alright," Leo replies, grinning a grin that feels fake even to him and holding out his plate of cookies. "I was just sayin' welcome to the neighbourhood, is all."

"Oh, thank you very much," Pavel says with earnest, and Leonard's grin feels a little less fake when he notes the v in very changed to a w. "You live next door, da?"

"Er, yes," Leonard says hesitantly and he curses himself for not asking Nyota about at least basic Russian. He gestures to the house to the left of them, and Pavel peeks his head out to look as if he hasn't seen it before. He clears his throat and scratches the back of his head, feeling irrationally self-conscious about a house that isn't even his.

"It's a very nice home," Pavel informs him. The smile is no longer fake.

"Why, thank you," Leo says and holds the cookies out further, motioning for Pavel to take them. When Pavel does, Leo says, "It's my  ol'  Grandma's very best recipe."

The first lie.

Pavel thanks him, and then his father is walking out as well, holding a wash cloth and staring at Leonard like he already doesn't trust him. Smart man, Leo thinks. Very smart.

He, too, says something in Russian, but then appears to repeat the question in English, accent as thick as Pavel's, if not more so, "And who is this?"

"Len," Leo introduces himself (uses his real name, because that's what you do when you're winning them over, but only marginally), extends his hand again but doesn't step right on inside. (That'd be rude.)

"He's our neighbour," Pavel says like it's the more exciting than moving to America. "He brought us these." He holds up the cookies like a prize.

"How nice, thank you," the man says, and he steps forward to take Leonard's hand, wrist open and - tattooed.

Leonard's blood runs cold.

"Would you like to come inside?" Pavel asks him but he can't breathe, and he's frozen and staring at the man looking at him expectantly and oh God - no, God.

"Uh, no, thank you, I actually have -" he swallows hard, words stumbling and the three of them stare at him. "I have somewhere I need to be, but I - thank you." He waves, tries to smile (it falters, he knows) and he turns before he can stare any longer, half jogging across the lawn and half-falling into his car and -

He's yelling at Jim before he's even there.

~X~

"Explain it to me, Jim," Bones is in his face, the only one not afraid to be, and Jim stares back at him, blue eyes narrowed (but blank, so blank) and Spock stands at his shoulder, a hand on his hip. "Is it them?"

Jim licks his lips, stares at Bones like he can distract him, but Bones isn't going to let that happen and Jim can see that. He swallows, loud, a gulp, really, and reaches over to touch the inside of Bones's wrist like he knows that he's asking. "It's not the one who did it, that one's long gone." There's a curve to his mouth, sinister. "But this one -" he lifts a finger, points it at Bones. "This one's meant for me."

"I'll take him down then."

"No, that's not what we want," Jim tells him and looks away, leans back into Spock's touch who is silent against him. "Bones, the kid - Pasha, he's the warning. We take down him and we'll have them by their shirt collars." He's getting excited, riled up, and Bones takes a step back. "They can't even find us, that's how good I am." Jim grins, wild and out of control and Spock squeezes his hip to calm him down.

He barely reins himself in before meeting Bones's eyes again. "We're gonna get them to trust you," Jim tells him, like he's sorry he didn't make it clear before. "You're gonna win them over, and they'll love you, and then you're going to make a big mess and they'll know not to fuck with me - us."

Bones has never been so scared in his life.

But he's not going to do anything about that.

"Of course, Jim."

~X~

Leonard doesn't think of Christopher Pike often. He knew him for all of two minutes, way in the beginning when he was fresh from divorce and shaking from trying to drown himself in alcohol to forget his malpractice suit, and Jim took his hand and showed him a way to fix it. Pike was the one who tested him, put a gun to his temple and made him take an oath and then laughed and looked at Leonard like there was still potential in there.

When Pavel Chekov knocks on his door (after the place is all furnished, thankfully) holding a pie and wearing a smile, Leo thinks of Pike.

"I wanted to thank you properly," Pavel says and there's a flash deep in his eyes that makes Leo think that the innocence written all over the boy is just as much of a fraud as Leonard himself is.

"No need, darlin'," Leonard says as he takes the dessert; he files away the blush across Pavel's nose when their hands touch for a later date. "But you're very welcome."  He meets Pavel's eyes. "Would you like to come in? I can't eat all this by myself."

The blush that hasn't faded darkens into a deep red and Pavel nods in assent, after a flicker around like he's doing something wrong, entering Leonard's (temporary) home with little hesitation. He opens his mouth like he's going to compliment the place again, but Leonard doesn't really want to hear it so he clears his throat and does everything in his power to make casual conversation. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"

Pavel looks at him sheepishly as he follows him into the kitchen. "Already graduated."

Leo raises an eyebrow, feigning (but really?) being impressed, and asks, "Wait a minute, how old are you?"

"Seventeen," Pavel draws himself up further as he settles on the barstool behind the island that separates the kitchen and the living room. He says it like it's older than he actually is and fixes Leonard with a stare. "How old are you?"

Leo laughs a laugh that starts in his left lung and consumes him whole, until he's shaking and red faced and hating everything about himself (and the gun tucked neatly under the kitchen sink.) "Old enough to shave."

Pavel touches his jaw self-consciously but doesn't say anything as Leo sets a plate down in front of him.

"So," Leonard clears his throat to garner Pavel's attention as he concentrates on cutting the pie (concentrates on trying to forget the kid across from him is seventeen and what he's supposed  to do). "Where you from?"

(LIke he doesn't know.)

"Russia," Pavel is quick to say, a smile on his face. "We just moved here from Russia. And you?"

"Pardon?" Leo looks at him and then realises. "Oh - Georgia."

"Is it nice there?"

Leonard swallows past the homesickness suddenly crowding his throat, tries not to think of Joanna still down there and to get rid of the taste of peaches on the back of his tongue. Now is not the time. "Yeah," he says anyway, with a fond smile. "It is."

Pavel nods like he understands. "I already miss Russia, but it is - nicer here."

Don't be so sure, Leonard wants to say, and a sick part of him that Jim can never know about wants to warn Pavel to run, God, just get out of here and never look back. He can't do that though. He knows he can't. "Are we talking about the same place?" Leonard says instead and  Pavel throws his head back and laughs.

When Pavel leaves, after more casual conversation that Leo strains himself to make, he thinks winning him over won't be so hard.

~X~

Leonard's favourite thing about the strip club that hides their location in a manner that's so cliché there's no way it _wouldn't_ work, is that it doesn't discriminate. There are men and women of every shape and every size and every skin colour, and although Leo himself never stops to admire the view, he knows it's what keeps the income raking in (if not the arms deals and the drug trafficking).   
  
Scotty himself is the one who hires anyone who is interested (they really only do through background checks and some surveillance, because nobody who isn't one of them or a normal citizen is going to infiltrate these walls).   
  
Leo, of course, wouldn't tell anyone that that's his favourite part; if someone asked, it's the bar.

It's well-stocked and Nyota is the best at what she does, so when Leonard slides in a seat across from her, she smiles and wastes no time setting down a shot of bourbon (reminds him of home). He gives her thanks and she watches him for a moment before saying, "Scotty told me about the assignment."

"And how does he know?" Leo asks but he's not surprised, not with Chapel being the one sitting behind the monitors that see and know everything. The three of them are connected in ways Leonard doesn't think he'll ever understand.

"Call him Pasha," Nyota ignores the question as she cleans out the shot glasses lining the counter with a rag that needs washing itself. "Not yet, just kind of slip it in there. Da means yes, nyet means no." Four shot glasses down. "Your name in Russian is Lyonya, but he might use Lyov or Lev." She looks at Leo for a moment and then whispers, low enough that the wires Jim has strewn throughout won't catch it. "When you kill him, don't let him see your face."

"I never do."

"He's doing it for Chris, you know," she says to him, and there's a finality in her words that signals she won't say anymore. Leo nods.

He knows.

~X~

When Leonard gets to his temporary home (missing the flat that he holes himself up in dearly), Pavel is standing outside his front door holding grocery bags and looking antsy. Leo's concerned, more than he should be, and so he parks his car and jogs towards him, taking the bags out of his hand.

Pavel's apologising before Leo can even ask, "I'm very sorry, Len, I -" he flutters his now empty hands. "I locked myself out."

Leo smiles crookedly and there's a relief in his chest that shouldn't be there. "Happens to the best of us." He fishes out his own key with his free hand and unlocks his front door, letting Pavel in first, who is blushing and still apologising.

"Do you know when your parents will be home?"

" _Nyet_ , they are working," Pavel swallows the last word hard and it occurs to Leo that maybe he knows. He knows who his father is, what he does; maybe he knows he has ties to a mafia that he shouldn't have ties to, and maybe he knows who Leonard is. Maybe he's not the one playing the game after all.

"Well, _papa_ is," Pavel corrects himself. "Mama's taking a class, to help with her English." He smiles like he's proud; it's pretty damn cute, and Leo hates him for it.

"What does he do?" Leo asks; _casually_.

Pavel hums and haws and then he says, "I am not sure."

He doesn't know then. It's obvious, if he knew, he would have made up something, even had something ready, rapid fire, "I don't know" is giving too much away and for the first time in several minutes Leonard breathes easily. "Top secret, huh?" he jokes, half-heartedly, storing Pavel's groceries into his fridge for safe-keeping. (Tries to hide that it's otherwise empty.)

"I think it is military," Pavel brushes it off, easily, and he's smiling at Leo in a way that he supposes is friendly. He's not sure how he feels about that. "I apologise again, if I am - burdening you I-"

"Hey, don't worry about it, Pav," Leonard looks him in the eye then; steps closer, brushes his fingers across the back of Pavel's handle. "You could never."

Pavel smiles.

Leonard has the decency to feel guilty.

~X~

What Leo doesn't learn from the thin folder he keeps well hidden, he learns from Pavel himself.

The kid's as smart as Jim said he was, can do math Leonard's never even heard of in his head and knows enough about God damn astrophysics to sound like he was born in the wrong century. When Leonard listens, Pavel demonstrates with his hands the science in the cosmos (always apologises, says he gets over excited; Leo touches the back of his hand, the inside of his wrist, his shoulder, tells him it's okay), tells Leo he wants to head down to Florida and work for NASA ("The American space program was always better"). Graduated two years ago, but he's staying home because he's still young and the schooling in Russia isn't the same as it is in America, and his parents want him close, and a whole plethora of reasons, but he'll get to NASA if it's the last thing he does. That's what he tells Leo.

When he's not talking about space, he's remembering Russia, the cold that isn't the same as that in California, remembers the cuisine and the culture (shies away from that last bit a lot, blushes and agrees wholeheartedly when Leo tells him how fucked up - "Pardon the language, darlin'" - that whole anti-gay thing is); in turn, Leonard tells him what Jim says he  can about Georgia. It's nice, Leonard thinks.

It's nice, and he hates it.

He's done this before; there was the first, the woman named Valerie who he drugged into a coma she never got out of (she wasn't a very nice woman), a man called Dorian who owed Jim too much money (died by a blade after paying Jim back), and more that he doesn't want to think about it, but not like this. And Pavel's still young, and it's not him that deserves death, but it's him that's going to get it, and Leonard hates that but there's nothing he's going to do about it.

He doesn't hate Pavel. Should. But doesn't.

Pavel's parents fight a lot, too much, and sometimes it'll be late at night and Leonard will be cleaning out a gun that hasn't been shot in three months and Pavel will knock on the door with Russian poetry or a board game and ask if he can come in. Leo lets him, of course, and that's when Pavel talks to him.

(Leonard often wonders what two members of the Russian mafia argue about.)

One night, Pavel comes to Leo with red rimmed eyes that Leonard feels deep in his chest; he tells him, "Let's get out of here, Pasha."

And they do.

Leonard isn't sure what he was planning, but they end up in a park that's too late for anything but stoner kids and a couple giggling on the swing set, reliving their childhood or something equivalent.

(This is where it starts.)

Pasha sits next to him on the park bench, too close, with hands he wrings together and blows on. He won't say why he cried, only that his parents yelling escalated into a smashed picture frame. As he says it, he rubs his hands together more furiously and then exclaims in frustration and mutters, "I'm cold."

Leonard shushes him. "Here." He takes Pasha's hands in his, holds them tight, squeezes them with reassurance and Pavel begins to cry again, sniffling.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs out, first in Russian, and then in stilted English and inhales deeply twice. “I’m sorry, I’m a child.”

“Hush,” Leonard says and he shouldn’t and he hates it but he brings Pavel’s hands to his mouth and kisses them gently and in that moment he almost cries too. (Wants to apologise, so bad, God he does, but he can’t. He can’t. He can’t.)

Pavel stares at him for a long moment, his crying stomped down, and then, in one move, kisses Leonard.

(This is when it starts.)

He pulls away a moment later, face flushed and mouth swollen and he’s breathing heavy, and he says (first in Russian, and then in stilted English), “I’m sorry, it’s - I’m sorry.” He stands, so quickly he stumbles, tearing his hands from Leo’s. “I’m sorry, it’s a stupid crush, I -”

But he has him now, right here in this moment, and Leonard was right - it didn’t take very long at all, just a few weeks, and he’s so sorry, so he stands too and he holds Pasha’s face in his hands and kisses him again; he wonder if Pasha can taste the apology in his mouth.

“ _Lyonya_ ,” Pasha breathes into his lungs.

(This is how it starts.)

 


	2. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Pasha falls in love and Leonard falls apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two AYO. Not beta'd again because I'm lazy as fuck please pardon.

Pasha falls in love the way any teenager does: all at once.

    Leonard sees it in the way he comes right over to the place he's reluctantly begun to call home (at the very least,  his house , since home is in a state above the Sunshine one, made of rotting wood and peaches) and throws himself into Leonard like he was terrified of ever letting go in the first place, like he's so lucky every time Leo opens the door. 

    He sees it in the way Pasha holds his wrists and speaks to him reverently (sometimes in Russian), in the way he kisses him like it's the last time every time and  every time Leonard thinks to himself: he knows. There's no way he doesn't know, it's not possible.

    But if he did know, God if he did.

    A part of Leonard tells him it'd be easier to kill him, then, to shoot him between the eyes or strangle him or even something God damn poetic like poisoning, but another screams  no, hold on a little longer , and he doesn't know which one scares him more. He's gotten attached before, when he wasn't supposed to, gotten too close and opened himself up. Jim always swooped in with an icy smile and told Bones, "It's okay, Bones, you just have a big heart with a lot of love to give." Once, he'd hoped, that they'd be spared, but that night he helped Spock clean the brains of a man he cared very much about off his living room walls. He hasn't gotten attached since, at least, not until -

    No. He can't. He  can't. 

It's hard, sometimes, really, distancing himself from the se(w)enteen year old Russian kid who has a lot of himself that he doesn't show to anybody but Leonard. Sometimes Leo thinks the damn kid just needed someone to take care of him, for a little while, but there's something Pasha's eyes every time he looks at him like he's not too young for falling in love and that he's gone and done it and both of them are fucked over. He never wanted Pasha to fall in love with him, God he didn't, it's Jim, who keeps pushing it along, breathes, "Wait," into the telephone and sets up God damn dates like he's fucking  Millionaire Matchmaker ( always secluded and dark and every one makes Leo's heart pound because he thinks,  dear God Jim's going to make me kill him today).   And every day Leonard wakes up without any breath and wonders how he got here.

    (Maybe if he'd gone to a different bar, maybe if he'd stayed behind and fixed things with Jocelyn, maybe if his scalpel hadn't slipped on the operating table, maybe if he didn't return Jim's easy smile, maybe if he didn't let Jim draw him in with tales of riches - "All you have to do is knock out a few guards, we'll have all the money in the world - for your daughter" - maybe if he didn't let Jim take him to Pike, maybe if he had done something, anything different, like eat toast instead of cereal, and Pike had lived, maybe, maybe, maybe -)

    Sometimes Pasha looks at him and Leonard thinks he wouldn't wanna be anywhere else.

    ~X~

    Pasha never says it, though. Sometimes, maybe, he does, in Russian, when Leonard isn't paying much attention. Nyota taught him how to say those words, but he's not going to. He can't bring himself to. To him, it'd be final. A death sentence.

    Sometimes, when Leonard's been kissing Pasha for so long both of their mouths are sore and swollen and Pasha's laid on beneath him with clothes rummaged but still on, he'll whisper something, green eyes wide and mouth in an "o" and Leonard doesn't know (doesn't want to know) so he just kisses him again. They always stop there - after all, Pavel is still just a  child and the whole “half your age plus seven” rule missed them entirely while laughing all the way. Neither of them ever bring them up, like it's not something that makes (could break, if a murder doesn't) their entire relationship.

    Once, just once, Pavel stares at Leonard long and hard, and says, accent as thick as ever, "Sometimes, I wish we could go out, and hold hands in public, but I know we can't." He blinks for a moment, and then he smiles, slow and languid and it feels like a hummingbird is trapped inside Leo's rib cage. "And that's okay."

    Leonard smiles back, just as slow and just as languid and tells him, "I know somewhere we can go."

    Because Jim told him too.

~X~

    Leonard should have his reservations about taking Pasha to a fucking strip club of all places, but he thinks if the kid can walk around with a giant red target on his back and a metaphorical gun pressed to his head at all times, one trip to the  Enterprise won't kill him. (After all, that's Bones's assignment.)

    He looks damn cute, though, fingers laced through Leo's and staring with his green eyes flown wide; the strobe lights that hurt Leonard's head flash across his face in a rainbow of colours, throwing purple and red and yellow shadows across his features. "You have friends here?"

    Leo wants to laugh; he does, but he thinks it comes out a little tight. "I do."

    Pavel's still staring, and it could be the red strobes, but there seems to be a blush climbing up his neck and spreading across his cheeks. Leonard thinks  seventeen and this time the laugh comes out a little hysterical this time. He pulls Pasha along, leads him to Nyota at the bar who is wearing the most sincere grin he's ever seen on her. Her eyes look sad.

    "This must be the infamous Pavel," she says, eyes dancing and Pasha straight up ducks his head like a miniature bow in greeting. She takes one of his hand in both of hers and says, "It's very nice to meet you."

    "You, too, ma'am," Pavel returns, shooting Leonard a look that makes him smile.

    "No  ma'am's here," Nyota laughs, letting go of his hand to return to her task of wiping off the countertop. "Just Nyota."

    "Nyota," Pasha lights up. "Swahili?"

    Nyota laughs, a light sound, like a bird drifting on wind. "How did you know that?"

    "He's very smart," Leonard interjects, swings an arm around Pavel and meets her gaze. She looks at him like she can see straight into Leo's soul, can pick apart all the pieces that have  Pasha scrawled across them in messy handwriting. Like she's laying them out across an exam table and swallowing hard and whispering she's so sorry. Leonard thinks she knows. She knows.

    "What brings you here, Pasha?" Nyota asks, and Pavel widens his eyes a little at the familiar nickname.

    "Oh, just -" the blush is real this time, not just a trick of the light. "Somewhere to be."

    Just then, a pair of hands appears on each of Leonard's shoulders, and his heart pounds again; he thinks it's Jim, he panics, he can't breathe - there's a low voice, a breathy whisper in his ear, that says, "Is this the lad?"

    Leo exhales. He nods, and Scotty's letting go of him, throwing his arms around Pavel like they've been friends for years. "It's nice to meet you, laddie, we've heard a lot about you." He squeezes him again and Pasha looks eighteen different brands of uncomfortable, so Leonard smiles reassuringly at him.

    "You, too," Pasha squeaks out when Scotty finally lets go of him, holding him at arms length and looking him up and down. There's sullenness to his expression, something similar to the sadness in Nyota's eyes, and Scotty looks over at Leonard, mouth in a thin line. He knows, too, then. Do they all?

    "I mean," Pasha clears his throat, grabs everyone's attention again (Leo thinks he could do that anywhere, with anyone; walk into a room and smile and have everybody fall in love with him instantly). "It is nice to meet you, too."

    Scotty runs his hand through Pavel's curls in an intimate gesture, before finally releasing him and folding his arms across his chest, sits on one of the barstools across from Nyota and wears a face that looks painful. "Have you met everyone, then?"

    "Not Jim," Nyota is the one to say, and the sadness in her eyes spills over across her whole face. 

    "Jim?" The name sounds innocent in Pasha's mouth. It sounds like any other name in the world, a name attached to somebody normal, some upstanding citizen, somebody good. It sounds like a word anybody would say on any given day, and everybody who hears it said just then tenses and stills.

    "Our boss," Nyota says in the silence, always forthcoming with information. (He's gonna die anyway, right?)

    Pasha's brow furrows and he opens his mouth as if he's going to ask more, but thinks better of it and squares the question away. Leonard, unlike Nyota,  isn't so forthcoming, and hasn’t told Pavel anything; no elaborate backstory, besides tales of Georgia and an ex-wife and a new beginning. He hasn't given up his career, not even a fake one, hasn't given a last name. Pasha has asked, quietly, like he's afraid of an answer though he isn't sure why (he has great instincts, that kid), and Leonard always avoids it with kisses. 

    Another hand appears on Leonard's shoulder then, thin and pale and it pulls him back and aside, shushes him when he protests and steers him towards the back of the club. When they're inside that  Employees Only  hallway, locked away from the rest of the world, Leonard finally gets out of the grip and turns to face -

    "Spock," he says, thinly. Spock's face is a blank slate, just like it always is, the dark of his eyes flat, emotionless. Leonard thinks everybody should take a lesson from him. "Is there something the matter?" Like there isn't always.

    Spock just stares for a moment, and then says, "James would like to speak to you about Pavel Chekov."

    The panic in his throat should not be there. He yells this at himself, screams it so loud in his head the can hear it over the sound of his heart pounding loud in his ears, and when he’s in that room, Bones on full front and Leonard McCoy stashed somewhere far away, so far, on the other side of that ocean, Jim’s waiting. Jim’s eyes are wild, more so than usual, his eyes wide and  red and his mouth open. “Soon,” he tells Bones, then, with a gasping breath. “You have to do it soon.”

    Bones stares.

    He’s running his hands through his hair, over his face, scrubbing at his cheeks and pushing his fists into his eyes. “They’re getting closer, I’m trying everything, I am, and I’m damn good –“ he slams a fist down on the desk and Bones does everything in his willpower not to flinch. He succeeds, if only marginally. 

    “It has to be soon,” Jim repeats, looking at Bones and crossing the room and putting his hands on his face. “Do you understand?” His fingertips dig into the back of Bones’ neck, into his temples, hard enough to leave bruises. Jim, imprinted on Bones. 

    “I understand.”

    “Do you?” Jim screams, loud, in Bones face, and this time the flinch does not go without being performed. “Why do you think I had you bring him here, it has to be  soon.”

    Today.

It goes unsaid; it hangs in the air between them, like an unstable atom, radioactive, ready to tear it all apart. Bones can’t breathe, he can’t, the screaming in his head is drowned out by the  no his heart and lungs are pounding out. He shouldn’t look away from Jim’s eyes, it’s the worst decision he could ever make, but he does; he meets Spock’s. Spock’s are as flat as always, as empty, as robotic, but there is a crease in his brow that makes something very akin to hope bloom in his chest.

    “James,” Spock says, then. “I believe that would be unwise.”

    Jim lets go of Bones then, looks at Spock with blue eyes dilated. “They’re so close,” he whispers, and something on his face is  broken.  “They took - they took the only person who ever cared about me and they shot him in the head and made me  watch -”

    “We shall warn them, then,” Spock replies, voice as deadpan as his gaze. “Ms. Chapel will inform them that we have their son in our – possession.” Bones almost gags at the word, almost vomits at the agreement on Jim’s face. “If they do not comply, then we will kill him.”

    “And we’ll make them watch,” Jim says, but his voice is less wild, more tight, and when he sits behind his desk his face is composed and his hands steady. “Have Sulu start the process.”

    When Leonard makes it out into the hall, he falls to his knees and sobs.

~X~

    “Lyonya, are you alright?”

    It becomes a commonly spoken question in the days that follow; every time Leonard tenses as the phone rings, every time he holds Pasha a little closer than he means to, every time he inhales sharply at the sight of a car with tinted windows and generic license plates (repeated five times over, he knows they’re fake, it’s a tactic Jim uses; somehow he doesn’t think it’s Jim.)

    Leo always replies with a smile and a, “Fine”, as he sends Pavel away to his parents, who have started looking at Leonard with something  more in their eyes. Like they know everything. 

    He thinks they do; he thinks they’ve gotten just as close as Jim feared and they’re closing in and soon, so soon Leonard can taste it, one of them is going to die. A black hole starts in his sternum, expands and grows, pulsates, the gravitational field pulling him inside out, and every waking moment he is a man drowning. 

    Jim tells him they’re still being held at bay, that they received their message, and Leonard can’t tell him that message was a mistake because now they’re after  him. 

    After all, he can’t kill Pasha if he’s dead.

    They get to him first.

    It’s dark and raining slightly and Leo gave Pavel a ride to a  high school party that’s just so normal, he can pretend for one minute that there’s not a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans and a car that’s been following them for the last twelve blocks. Pasha kisses Leonard for a long time, a hand to his jaw and those Russian words in his mouth again before vanishing inside the too-large house with the too-loud music. It makes Leo nervous, doesn’t trust whatever is beyond those walls, but if Pasha’s on his hit list and he’s dragging him to God damn  strip clubs, he really doesn’t think he has any right to say anything about it.

    It’s safer, certainly, than the car still tailing him.

    He pulls to a stop eventually, climbs out of his car as casually as he can and walks to the other one idling behind him. The driver side pops open and a man no older than Jim stands, a hand pressed flat against the roof of the car. In the next second, the familiar circular cool press of a handgun is against Leo’s temple and he puts his hands up, smiles a smile he learned from Jim. “I don’t mean any harm.”

    “Not to us,” the man without the gun agrees, accent thick and oh so recognizable. “Get in.”

    “Can I ask who sent you?” he dares to ask as the gunman who puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him forward.

    “Not James Kirk,” the other one says, gets back into his vehicle as the gunman shoves Leo into the backseat, climbs in after him. He is a burly man, tall, whose head brushes the ceiling, littered with tattoos and a crease in the brow above his eyes that looks permanent. Leonard thinks the whole thing is ridiculous and there’s  no way  this isn’t Jim’s doing when he remembers that Pasha is the prized son of a Russian  mob.

    “Where are we going?” Leonard asks, gruff with a hand curled tight around his knee and Pasha’s smile burned into his retinas.

    “Just for a drive, nowhere special,” the driver says with a chuckle that sounds like one from a James Bond movie. “We just want to talk to you.”

    “Are you going to tell me not to kill him?”

    The driver looks at Leonard in the rearview mirror with eyes that smirk and Leo’s jaw clenches. “We know you would not listen,” he hums, taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Then again, are you even going to.” It’s not a question.

    Leonard exhales through his nose. “What is that supposed to mean?”

    “You’re attached to him,” the other man shrugs. “You cannot kill something that’s a part of you.”

    “Then what is the point of any of this?!” he snaps it, it comes out too loud ad that tattooed man who has Leonard’s life in his hands grunts and presses the gun closer. It’s him that replies.

    “We want you to give your boss a reply.”

    Leonard doesn’t reply.

    “There’s a double agent in his ranks.”

~X~

    Jim reacts much in the same matter Leonard assumed he would.

    He screams, a high pitched keening that tears from his throat, and swipes everything off his desk and topples the chair with  Christopher Pike carved into one of the legs and it’s Spock that grips him and whispers something to him that Bones cannot hear. “I’ve given everything to all of you,” Jim screams anyway, eyes red and savage. “I saved all of you, this is what you do?”

    “It is not Leonard, James,” Spock says, with such surety in his tone that even Jim, quivering against him, stops and looks up.

    “Of course not,” Jim agrees, swivels to look at Bones. “Bones wouldn’t do that to me. Not even for that kid.”

    Bones barely makes it out of that room in one piece.

    As he makes a walk that seems miles long back to his car, he thinks. He turns everyone over in his head.

    Spock Grayson: nothing on him, Leonard doesn’t know a damn thing about him, but he’s too close to Jim. He doesn’t have to say it, doesn’t even have to show it on his face, but there’s a fierce devotion in him that couldn’t be wavered by anything. Spock loves Jim deeply and with everything in that robot-body and everything that Jim has built, he has built with Spock next to him.

    Montgomery Scott: drinks too much, has girls on his arms (only one in his heart and that’s Nyota). He deals with the drug trafficking more than anything, has agents as far as Las Vegas in meth labs and driving trucks over the border. He’s an asset to Jim, he rakes in the cash, but he’s not the type of man that gets caught up in anything but his job. He knows about Pasha, Bones’ assignment, but not much past that. Jim saved him from a needle hanging out of his arm. 

    Nyota Uhura: she would be the most suspicious, Leonard thinks, because she’s fluent in Russian (and just about every other damn language in the world), she would know  how  to. In fact, he fully expects her to be investigating the most thoroughly, because she has all the information, but something deep in him tells him it’s not her. Not Nyota. Jim saved her from a bank heist gone wrong (she just wanted to take everything away from the man that destroyed her family. Jim showed her how to.)

    Hikaru Sulu: smartest guy Leonard knows (besides Pavel); has a doctorate in computer fucking science or something equally difficult. Spent his days like Pasha would have if he knew what exactly it is he’s a part of. Jim saved him from a knife held to his throat.

    There’s more, of course, their family spreads all the way across the country, but the men who dumped Leonard off back to his car in the middle of the night had said with a sneer to their mouths, “It’s someone right at the top, too.” These people, these are the ones closest to Jim (there’s also Christine Chapel and Carol Marcus and Gary Mitchell and Gailia but they aren’t as much so). It could be any of them, Leonard realises. Spock, Nyota. Any of them.

    Some sick part of him thinks, maybe Pasha doesn’t have to die after all.

~X~

    It’s Pasha, who pins Leo to the bed like he’s not the fumbling seventeen year old virgin everyone thinks he is. There’s something downright  ferocious in the way he captures Leonard’s mouth in his own, sucks hickeys into his neck and collarbone.

    “Jesus, Pasha,” Leonard breathes against his mouth; it turns into a moan when Pavel presses his knee between Leo’s legs. Pavel quiets him for a moment, straddles him completely and touches his chest with that same marvelous look on his face, like he’s still not sure Leo’s real. (“I’m not,” Leonard wants to say. “I’m a fake, it’s all a lie.” He doesn’t.)

    “ Krasivyy ,” he breathes, and Leonard knows what it means. If he wasn’t who he was, he’d probably blush.

    “I love you, you know,” Pavel tells him then, and there’s a change in his tone, something sharp that makes Leonard uneasy. “I love you so much.”

    “Pasha-”

    Pavel leans down, presses his mouth against Leonard’s ear.

    (It ends like this.)

    “I know everything.”


	3. Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bones didn’t think it’d end like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayo finAL PART. It's wonky and paced weird because its supposed to be I swear it. Will there be a sequel?? maybe. probably.

_When Leonard met Jim Kirk, it was a simpler time - before the malpractice suit, before everything really fell apart._

_Jim was very definition of jittery, breathed kinetic energy, had pure danger sparking in his eyes and his clenched teeth. He grew up stealing, he told Leonard, grew up running from anybody who ever tried to take advantage of him, grew up defending off a step-dad who got too handsy the moment he hit puberty. (Fucked him up, real bad; Pike saved Jim the best he could.) Leonard met him in a hospital room with three broken fingers and one Christopher Pike at his shoulder. There's blood across his teeth and he tells Leonard as he sets his fingers straight that he beat a guy to death._

_“Didn’t believe him,” he’d tell someone later. “I didn’t realise who he was.”_

~X~

    It’s Bones, not Leonard, not Lyonya, but Bones, who launches at Pavel (not Pasha), tackles him to the ground with a hand at his throat and a gun at this temple. The noises being torn from his throat do not sound human and are the furthest thing from words. It’s Bones who locks as much of himself away as he can, while he keeps his fingers dug into Pavel’s flesh - Pavel’s curls tickle his fingers.

    But it’s not Pavel who stares back up at him with a blank face - it’s Pasha. It’s Pasha who looks at him like he always has, and it’s Pasha who breathes as evenly as he can with Bones’ hand constricting his throat. It is still Bones, not Leonard, who presses the gun further and it is still Pasha whose eyes flash in fear.

_It has to be now._

    This is right here, it’s all come down to this moment, and Pasha’s laugh rings in Leonard’s ears, long and loud and beautiful. The world is a tunnel, thrown into dark shadows where every word that’s passed between the two of them works, and at the end, a pinprick of light that is the same shade of green as the iris of Pavel’s eyes. _Now it has to be now_ , Leonard screams to himself, Bones screams to himself, _there is no coming back from this. Empty one bullet into Pavel’s skull, come on, it’s okay, you’ve done it before._

    The voice in his head sounds reminiscent of Jim.

    It’s that fact that yanks Bones to his feet, Pavel being dragged along with him and he hates that he has to back Pavel up against the wall, keep a hand around his neck. There will be bruises later - if there is a later for Pavel. The thought is too much.

    “Lyonya,” Pasha chokes out, desperate.

    “Don’t,” Leonard replies. “Don’t say a damn thing.”

   _Can’t kill him, can’t kill him, can’t do it not now, not here, can’t do it. Not here._ Instead, grabs Pavel’s wrist and twists and the sound Pasha makes sends a wave of nausea through him, starting in his stomach and coming up his throat. He’s sure he’ll throw up for a moment - he does, inside his mouth, but he swallows it down, throat burning.

    “How long have you known?” he breathes without meaning to, letting go of Pavel’s throat and staring at him, keeping him backed up, keeping him trapped.

    Pavel just looks at him for a long, quiet moment, and says nothing.

    “Were you going to kill me, instead?” Bones asks and he can’t help it - he laughs and laughs because it’s just so damn fucking funny, he can’t breathe, he’s laughing so hard. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he realises in between low pitched chuckles. It wasn’t.

    “Not everyone has to die, Leonard,” Pavel says and the laughter stops abruptly.

    “If I drag you out of this house, will they shoot at me?”

    “Nobody’s around.”

    “Where are they?”

    He’s silent again.

    “Tell me!” Leonard screams and the sound of it terrifies even him, but Pavel does not flinch. He simply replies, “The Enterprise.”

Something in Leonard fractures.

    ~X~

    _Three beers (one lost medical license) later and Leonard met Spock, who had a bowl cut and a blank face, and he barely spoke, but when he did it was with enough formality that Leonard felt like some backwoods, Georgia hick. Jim kept his hands on Spock at all times - touched his elbow,  rested his palm against his back or shoulder, let his fingers trail down his arm and thigh - and laid claim._

_Spock is just as smart as Jim, if not more, and he spoke of a mother who had passed on and a father who made more money than he deserved. They told Leonard, with gleams in their eyes and top teeth bared, they're going to survive._

_“How?” Leonard dared to ask and it’s Jim who showed him._

~X~

    He takes the backroads and pushes the gas pedal as far down as it’ll go; he keeps Pasha handcuffed in the seat next to him, keeps his gun at his head and drives one handed. His heart is loud and angry inside his chest, pounding against his rib cage like it’s trying to beat him to a pulp from the inside out.

    Leonard doesn’t really he’s saying anything to Pasha at all until the words, “I never wanted this,” slip out and hangs between them, connects them, draws them together. “I had to do this, for Joanna and for Jim and it was never supposed to come to this.” The gun in his hand wavers.

    “I know, Lyonya.”

    Leonard cannot see the road past the blurriness.

    ~X~

    _“I don’t want anything,” Leonard told Pike that day. “I just want my daughter to have a college fund, and to be able to survive in this world, that’s it.”_

_Jim shifted in his seat, looking back and forth between Leo and Pike; the latter had his mouth in a straight line, and then he was pulling out a gun (the first of many that Leonard will see), putting it to Leo’s temple and saying, “Once you’re in, kid, that’s it, there’s no going back.”_

_“I understand,” Leonard gritted, stared Pike in the eye._

_Pike smile._

_“We’ll make a damn fine soldier out of you.”_

~X~

    There are many questions on the tip of his tongue, but he cannot breathe long enough to be able to ask any of them. They sit in his mouth, heavy and hot, they itches as they crawl up from his throat and settle just behind his teeth, but his lungs are telling him he can’t.

    When he’s out of the car, and opening Pavel’s door he stops, and stares at him. “You’re too young,” he starts to say, but it’s broken and raspy, and his lungs are still yelling at him to stop, so he does. He studies Pavel’s face, studies the set of his mouth that he’s kissed so many times and the crease in the corner of his eyes. Leonard knows there’s a car near the left one, deep, un noticeable unless you’re way up close.

    Bones locks Leonard away and pulls Pavel from the car by the back of his neck.

    The first thing Leonard McCoy thinks as they step inside the Enterprise is: it’s too quiet in here.

    The lights are out, save for some that are dim and overhead; there are no dancers, only Nyota, standing near the entrance with red eyes and arms crossed. Sulu and Scotty are hovering near her, and there is only confusion on Scotty as his gaze falls from Leonard’s face to the cuffs locked tight around Pasha’s bruised and battered wrists. There is blood snaking from Sulu’s hairline, and a bruise across Scotty’s jaw.

    “He’s known for a while,” Bones tells him with a dry voice. Pavel stares over their heads.

    “What does your family want?” Nyota asks then, but the words shatter apart halfway through and she’s falling to her knees and she’s displaying everything Leonard is feeling. Something is wound tight in his chest, in the air, and he knows somehow that everything’s only going to get worse.

    “What’s going on?” Leonard grits out, though he knows. He knows.

    “We cannae leave,” Scotty relents. “They won’t let us.”

    “What happens if you do?” Leonard asks, though he knows. He knows.

    “They’ll kill them all,” Nyota whispers into the ground, and Leo can hear his daughter’s laughter echoing against Pavel’s inside his ears.

    ~X~

  _There was that one time, just before now, before the end, when Leonard sat across from Pavel’s parents. His mother had stared, English still rough and uneven, and his father had looked away, said, “We know who you are.”_

_“Not Pasha, though,” Leonard replied, easily. (How naive he had been.)_

_“No,” Andrei had agreed. “No, Pavel knows nothing. It is partly our fault, I suppose. We let you get too close; we thought you were good for him.”_

_“You were wrong.”_

_“No,” Pavel’s mother said then. “We were not.”_

    ~X~

 

    When Bones reaches Jim’s office, he realises that everything has led to this, exactly, here, now.

    Jim greets him from behind his desk, with a white smile plastered across his face and his startlingly bright blue eyes wide and full of electricity. His hands are shown, up and empty, like a surrender, and there is a man with a handgun to the back of his head.

    Spock is being held tight by the same two goons who had Leonard in a car, and yet, he is still stone faced, even as he looks at the barrel pushed against Jim’s head _. It could happen so fast,_ Bones wants to tell him. _One minute Jim’s here and then he’s not, and you’re not doing anything about it._

    It’s hypocritical, he thinks with a repressed laugh. After all, his own veins burn for Pasha, and yet, here he is.

    “Papa,” Pavel says and Bones’ own gun is set tight to his temple.

    “Nobody has to die, Leonard McCoy,” Andrei Chekov says, face tight, Jim held close to him.

    It’s a lie, of course.

~X~

    Bones didn’t think it’d end like this.

    It happens all at once.

~X~

    Jim was always good at getting out of tight spots; it’s why Pike recruited him, it’s how he’s lasted as long as he did. One elbow into the stomach of Andrei Chekov and he’s got the gun in his hand now, ready to pull the trigger, face lit up and he looks so alive, panting with adrenaline and Bones thinks, idly, that it’s hauntingly beautiful.

    At first Bones does not see who takes a knife from somewhere God only knows, comes up behind Jim, like he’s going to hug him, like it’s all going to be okay; who drives the blade between two of Jim’s ribs. For far too long, it’s silent.

    There is a gasping sound; it is something akin to death.

    “Spock?”

    “I am sorry, James.”

    Jim’s blue eyes are suddenly dim, pale in comparison to the bright red blood painted across him, his face, the floor.

    ~X~

    _“He was not always this way,” Spock said to Bones in a time and a place where Jim was not. “James was once -”_

_“Whole,” Bones finished._

_“Pike’s death affected James very negatively. Pike is why Pavel has to die, in his vision.”_

_“I know.”_

    ~X~

    “Tell me why, Spock.”

    “You are too dangerous.”

    Bones and Pasha and Andrei and the two men stare.

~X~

    Bones watches his best friend bleed out on the office floor, held by the only man James Kirk was ever capable of loving.

~X~

    “Leonard,” Spock says. “You and I need to have a word.”

~X~

    “You have to understand,” Spock begins. “That James was uncontrollable. Volatile, he would have had us all killed. Yourself included.”

    Leonard keeps looking at Jim’s body, curled on the floor, face staring towards the sky with a mouth gone slack. His eyes are still open.

    “Nobody had to die,” Spock repeats. “Save for James.”

    “How long have you been working with them?” Leonard grounds out. It sounds like gravel.

    “Quite some time,” Spock admits. “It was necessary for the survival of the family.”

    “The family,” Leonard repeats, harsh and dripping with false saccharin. “Some fucking family.”

    “You must know, Leonard, that from the very start, it was planned.”

    Leonard’s eyes are on Spock so fast he makes himself dizzy; he steps closer, points a finger at Spock’s chest, and his eye feels like a vein has burst in it. “What the fuck do you mean.” He doesn’t ask; he demands.

    “Pavel was never going to die. James had to believe for the time he was alive that he was in control. We had to - dismantle James’ power from the inside. Your assignment was not ever to murder Pavel Chekov.”

    “Then what was it.”

    “You had to be out of the way.”

    ~X~

    Pasha sits with Leonard later, in a dark room, with walls that echo their silence back at them. He holds Leo’s fingers entwined in his own, clutches at him with all of his strength, and between them they share the air.

    Leonard thinks of all the times he’s pressed his mouth to Pavel’s skin. “What is this all supposed to mean.”

    “Lynoya,” Pavel whispers. “It means we’re free.”


End file.
